U.S. At War: NATIONAL SERVICE ACT

In his eleventh message to Congress on the State of the Union, President Roosevelt gave assurance that "there were no secret treaties or political or financial commitments" made at Cairo and Teheran, declared that a basic essential for future peace is "a decent standard of living for all individual men and women and children in all nations" and proposed for the U.S. an "economic bill of rights" which showed that the New Deal is far from dead in the heart of its great sponsor. But the big news of his message—read to Congress by clerks while he nursed his vanishing flu—was his championing, at long last, of a national service law. As point five of a recommended legislative program, he called for it in these words:

A national service law—which, for the duration of the war, will prevent strikes, and, with certain appropriate exceptions, will make available for war production or for any other essential services every able-bodied adult. ... I have received a joint recommendation for this law from the heads of the War Department, the Navy Department and the Maritime Commission. . . .

National service is the most democratic way to wage a war. ... It does not mean reduction in wages. It does not mean loss of retirement and seniority rights and benefits. It does not mean that any substantial numbers of war workers will be disturbed in their present jobs. . . . Experience in other democratic nations at war—Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—has shown that the very existence of national service makes unnecessary the widespread use of compulsory power. . . .

There are millions of American men and women who are not in this war at all. It is not because they do not want to be in it. But they want to know where they can best do their share. National service provides that direction. . . .

It is argued that we have passed the stage in the war where national service is necessary. But our soldiers and sailors know that this is not true. We are going forward on a long, rough road—and, in all journeys, the last miles are the hardest. . . . We must mobilize our total resources. The national war program calls for the employment of more people in 1944 than in 1943. . . .

I hope that the Congress will recognize that, although this is a political year, national service is an issue which transcends politics. Great power must be used for great purposes.